“Beware, O wanderer, the road is walking too.”

(Hi. I’m still around, just not posting much. My life lately feels like the scene in this poem. I’ve got a manuscript for another book making rounds at publishers, hat in hand. And I’m mulling, reading and writing sketches that could be one of three book ideas. One’s a murder mystery, one’s a time-travel, sci-fi love story, and the third is hard to describe. Maybe it’s a memoir by the alien who makes first contact with humans and barely escapes by nuking the east coast. You know, cheerful stuff.)

Speed popping, long haul truckers stretch, yak, and
drink coffee with locals searching for pancakes or bacon
and eggs after a night of drinking, dancing, gambling, and
making whoopee at nightspots like the Tower Ballroom,
Saddlehead Sam’s, the 69 Drive-In, Barto’s Idle Hour
and the VFW. The haggard and the high class together.
No place else open. Roy Orbison belts out Candy Man
from the neon and chrome Wurlitzer. Cigarette smoke
curls around the horseshoe bar beneath a large, stuffed
deer head. Three a.m., crowd gone, fry cook leans over a
newspaper. Waitress rolls a nickel from her tip pocket
into the juke, punches in her selection, slides wearily
into a booth, puts her feet up, and lights a Pall Mall. Elvis
begins to sing. She closes her eyes and mouths the words,Are you lonesome tonight? Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?

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I remember him. He was sitting in the heat on the dock waiting for the ferry to Okracoke, Island in the Outer Banks, NC. It was probably sometime in '72 or '73. He'd driven nearly 12 hours straight and was so tired he couldn't understand the accents of the natives there. I wonder whatever happened to him? I heard a rumor that he married a skinny Irish girl and they settled down somewhere, had a couple of boys, got old. He put on a few pounds. She's still got the girlish shape that caught his eye all those years ago. He probably still has that shirt, though, and still wishes he looked like this. The idiot.

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